Rumored Change To NBA Draft Lottery Could End Popular Conspiracy Theory

Last year the NBA Draft lottery shocked and infuriated most of the basketball world as the Dallas Mavericks, a team with less than a two-percent chance of getting the top overall pick, won the draft lottery and secured all-world college star Cooper Flagg.

At the time, fans called foul and accused the NBA of conspiring to help the team after they committed the boneheaded Luka Doncic trade. Moving forward, that may be less of an issue.

According to ESPN's Tim Bontemps, the NBA has agreed on a reform that will renew live airing of the NBA Draft lottery. Whether it returns to the ping-pong ball selection process remains to be seen though.

"While ESPN's Brian Windhorst wrote about the "secret" room, sources expect the lottery itself -- not just airing of the results -- to become a live, televised event. No more conspiracy theories. All of it happening in real time. The potential for tremendous theater," Bontemps wrote.

"How a new lottery would play out is yet to be determined. The NBA's current method -- the first ping-pong ball selected determines the first pick, and so on -- is certainly one possibility, although that would eliminate much of the drama. Picking the 16th team first and going backward to No. 1 makes more sense as a television product. (The league would accomplish this by using a team's final drawn ping-pong ball, rather than its first, to determine draft position.)"

Fixing the Issue or Not?

NBA fans seemed mixed on whether changing it to a live event will stop the league from "rigging" the draft or not. Some believe it will at least help while others believe that the league can just find new workarounds.

"Maybe they'll stop rigging it then," one user mused on X.

"As if Adam Silver won't find a way to rig it," wrote another.

"Crazy how it's the year after it was so obvious they rigged it. 😂 so predictable," a third wrote.

"First commercial break , Adam silver swapping out the balls in the machine."

"The livestream reactions are going to go crazy for this."

The NBA's far bigger priority though is avoiding tanking, hence the introduction of their new 3-2-1 method that will punish teams that finish in the bottom-three of the league instead of potentially rewarding them.

The live draft lottery is probably more of a method for the league adding a few extra dollars in ad revenue than any real effort to discourage fans from assuming it's rigged.

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This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 12:07 PM.